Peter Coffin has earned the ridicule of the Internet for (allegedly) making up a fake girlfriend and using "her" various social networking accounts to harass a model and tell racist jokes. He's still denying wrongdoing, but the whole scandal raises a question: why would somebody invent a fake girlfriend in the first place?

The story, in brief: Coffin, an aspiring comedian, insulted Singaporean model/blogger Xiaxue over Twitter. She blocked him, and then began getting insulting tweets from one Kimi Kobayashi. Coffin claimed Kobayashi was his eighteen-year-old Japanese girlfriend, and the two had extensive conversations over Twitter and YouTube, some focusing on attributes of Coffin's penis. Kobayashi also posted twitpics of herself with various racist and unfunny captions about "Asians." After a little digging, Xiaxue discovered that Kobayashi didn't even exist — her pictures were actually of a Korean model, and Xiaxue suspected the entire thing was a ruse cooked up by Coffin himself. On Reddit, Coffin claimshe was duped by some unknown third party:

The Tale of the Made-Up Boyfriend or Girlfriend is one as old as time itself—or at least as old as…
Read more Read more

1. I did not make Kimi Kobayashi up. I have literally no idea who did, at this point it could be someone in my own town or someone in Uganda, assuming there is internet there. There probably isn't.

2. Yes, Kimi's account used some photos of a Korean woman. Possibly a model. Yes, I am a huge fool for believing it. We don't need to talk much about why - I have chatted, emailed, skyped, etc with this person (I have even group chatted with a friend with her) and I thought I had no reason to disbelieve her. I was wrong, I know. I'm an idiot. I am seriously destroyed, angry - both at "Kimi" and Xiaxue.

There is internet in Uganda, and Reddit users are unconvinced by Coffin's defense. Says one, "You stated you have slept with her, but that must be a lie because you have never met her. You stated that at one point she was sitting right beside you, but that was a lie because you have never met? [...] SHE deceived YOU?" But if it's true that Coffin made up an entire online identity, with whom he corresponded for eight months, the question remains: why? Xiaxue writes,

He actually reminds me of those crazy homophobes who like have an abnormal hatred for girly boys and have to beat them up - except he does that with vapid females. I'm guessing he has been picked on by them in high school.

Also,

After looking through "Kimi's" stuff, I realised that Peter loves to use her to talk about the Asian race A LOT. It's like he is fucking obsessed with Asians or something!!

Was Coffin using the Kobayashi alter ego to work out unresolved issues with women? Or perhaps just as an excuse to make the kinds of racist jokes that he, as a white man, might have drawn fire for on his own Twitter feed? Kobayashi's twitpics have captions like, "Which one is me? No really, i can't tell" and "Got Rice?" And a list of her cached tweets posted by Xiaxue reveals gems like, "I used to always wonder why stray pug dogs looked so familiar, then i saw my pussy in the mirror again" and "When women brag about giving birth with no pain relief, all i hear is 'my pussy currently looks like a Saving Private Ryan set.'" So if Kobayashi really was Coffin's creation, maybe her purpose was to legitimize his racist, sexist, and puerile humor, to make his humor "okay" because it came from a beautiful young Japanese girl. But Kobayashi's fake identity didn't make "her" jokes acceptable — and it certainly didn't make them funny.